As a reader of Green Talk, my guess is that you’re concerned about how the environment affects your health.
You probably know that toxic chemicals and other environmental hazards can make people ill and you want to minimize your exposures. You may even eat organic, grow your own pesticide-free veggies, use non-toxic cleaning products and avoid consumer products containing BPA and phthalates.
That’s great!
Reducing Our Toxic Exposure
But it isn’t enough. We should do reduce our individual exposures as much as possible, but did you know that even the most conscious green consumer is still at risk?
The truth is that it’s impossible to avoid toxics completely. They’re everywhere in the environment and there is nowhere on the planet that is uncontaminated. In fact. some of the highest levels of pollution are in the Arctic, many thousands of miles away from any direct sources. They are carried there by trans-oceanic air currents.
We are all exposed to hundreds of chemicals every day. There are about 80,000 registered for use in the U.S. and about 2,000 new ones are added each year. Amazingly, the vast majority have not been adequately tested for their safety. Most that have been studied are hazardous. In fact, about 180 diseases and disabilities have been linked with exposure to pollutants, including asthma, cancer, heart disease, birth defects, reproductive problems, and developmental and learning disabilities. According to the World Health Organization nearly one-quarter of all human illness is due to poor environmental quality. Tragically, the proportion is even higher for children – about one-third.
So the chances are that you or someone you love, has an environmentally related disease.
Choosing to be green is good, but we also need strong laws and regulations that will protect everyone, such as the new Safe Chemicals Act supported by Anna, this blog’s creator and author.
Role of the Environmental Health Movement
Thankfully, for the past 35 years there’s been a social movement working to prevent environmentally-related diseases. The environmental health movement was born in 1978, when Lois Gibbs organized her neighbors to protest the health effects of hazardous wastes leaking from an abandoned dumpsite in Love Canal, New York.
Since then, it’s grown into a national and international movement. About 10,000 environmental health organizations and people are listed on WISER, a worldwide social networking website for sustainability. There are almost 4,500 members in about 80 countries and all 50 states in the Collaborative on Health and the Environment. These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.
Putting human health at the center of concern distinguishes the environmental health movement from other branches of environmentalism. Unlike most environmentalists, who emphasize the natural world, the environmental health movement shines a spotlight on human health and well-being. This may sound like a small difference, but it changes everything because it humanizes environmental issues. By drawing attention to the effects of the environment on living, breathing people, the environmental health movement is intentionally getting very personal.
Whether it’s a cancer survivor talking about how she copes with daily life or a mom talking about her child’s learning disabilities, the stories of real people dealing with real illnesses make environmental issues much more tangible and immediate to the public.
This approach has made the environmental health movement successful. Working mostly at the local level, activists have organized countless communities to protest abandoned toxic waste dumps, oppose new hazardous facilities, raise awareness about local disease clusters and draw attention to environmental injustice.
Kate Davies
More importantly, it’s won numerous legislative victories at the state and local levels. Over 900 toxics policies were proposed or enacted in the U.S. between 1990 and 2009, and between 2003 and 2011, 18 states passed 71 chemical safety laws.
So far, the U.S. environmental health movement hasn’t received much public recognition. Perhaps this is because it’s grown up in the shadow of the environmental movement, or because it’s deliberately targeted state and local government laws, rather than federal legislation. But make no mistake, this social movement is committed, vibrant and strong, and it’s helping to build a healthy world for everyone.
Kate Davies, MA, DPhil, is the author of a new book called The Rise of the U.S. Environmental Health Movement. She is core faculty in the Center for Creative Change at Antioch University Seattle and clinical associate professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington. She has been active on environmental health for 35 years in the U.S., Canada and other countries.
Similar Posts:
- Wake Up! Join Healthy Child, Healthy World to Make our World Safe for Our Kids
- Demand Stronger Environmental Guidelines for Dioxin
- Protect Unborn Children from Toxic Chemicals. Sign the Declaration.
- Safe Chemical Reform. Lend Your Voice to Say It’s Time Congress.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Lessons Learned
Kate Davies says
I’d love to hear about your experiences of environmental health.
Perhaps you live in a community affected by pollution or know someone with an environmentally-related disease. (About half of all asthma, 20 percent of all cancer and 15 percent of all heart disease is linked with environmental exposures).
Also, if you have thoughts/comments about the environmental health movement or this post.
Rinkesh says
Your post just opened my eyes. All these years I thought we need to stay green to protect ourselves from toxic substances in the air.
Raising environment concerns among local communities to save this planet from toxic waste dumps is one thing that we can do to protect our environment.
Kate Davies says
Rinkesh:
Toxic air pollution and waste dumps are both sources of exposure, but there are many, many others.
The environmental health movement is working to reduce all exposures – those from food, water, air, soil and consumer products. Environmental health is a multi-faceted issue!
Thanks for your comment.
Michele Elise says
Gardening…phht…I’m going to press on with some aplomb here and not worry about injuring feelings. As most could not miss in the news, a major explosion just rocked Texas! There are, the last time I looked at the news, 2 dead and some 200 injured , houses have been leveled to the ground, and the explosion registered as an earthquake! The thing is exactly this. A fertilizer plant is very similar to a Nuclear plant. If everything is going right everyone is happy, but when disaster strikes and it almost always does eventually…IT IS A MAJOR FLIPPIN’ DISASTER!!! It harms people. It harms animals. It harms the earth! Think about what you are doing in your garden! Are you mixing up a science experiment in your back yard? (one that you are likely not actually qualified to do, mixing different chemicals to give your soil, this, that AND the other thing?)…or are you loving the earth? Even if you can’t have chickens or perhaps bunnies to create wholesome compost (no dangerous chemicals involved) I don’t think anyone can reasonably argue that they can’t find some sort of farm within driving distance who wouldn’t be willing to give up some of the vast amounts of manure that they are generally under duress (yes UNDER DURESS!…from local authorities) to dispose of properly. If farms can’t dispose of it properly these days they can be fined! YOU DO NOT NEED TO SPEND MONEY, MIXING UP A POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS, AND EARTH HARMING (IN THE MANUFACTURE OF SUCH)CHEMICAL COCKTAIL FOR YOUR PLANTS!!! Imagine if there was no such thing as fertilizer today (other than manure) and those people had their health, they had their homes, local farms weren’t being fined, and you actually had a HEALTHY garden, made from composted animal manure. Chicken manure, one of the best things for your garden, has very very little odor. I watched my neighbor last summer. He had an amazing pumpkin patch growing. In the middle of the summer it became dry and our nice neighbor from the expansive garden center across the street, very kindly suggested that he water the pumpkin patch since it was far from any spigot. He brought his tractor down with the plastic watering barrel attached. The same mix of water and miracle grow that he uses on the amazing plants at the gardening center. The next day the pumpkin patch was completely brown! Obviously something went horribly wrong with the mixture…but that’s the point…things do occasionally go horribly wrong! If we want to talk about healthful environmental living and take it seriously…then toss out the damn chemicals!!! Be part of the solution…not part of the problem! Stop buying them! You DON’T need them. Okay I’m done with my rant for now…but there is no reason for the terrible devastation that just happened in Texas…people losing their lives, their homes, their health with likely permanent damage to some people’s lungs because we bought the damn fertilizer to begin with! Creating a need. Creating another product to sell! It is OUR responsibility! And we need to start stepping up to the plate on these issues. I see people here with great recipes for counter cleaners and so forth made from citrus fruits, vinegar etc. Certainly those are great ways to try to be greener…but you know what?…buy the Fantastik, the Formula 409, etc. because they do less real damage to the environment than buying chemical fertilizers will, that are mined from the earth and then processed using vast amounts of power. by the way the manufacturing of most chemical fertilizers depends on NON-renewable resources! Cow manure, chicken manure, bunny manure …all COMPLETELY renewable resources, and they are intrinsically environmentally safe…and…and they don’t cause explosions that register as earth quakes! You can do it!
Anna@Green Talk says
Michele, is it enough to only use animal manure? Anna